Elizabeth Natale: Why Smarter Balanced Tests Fail Students

Ingram Publishing / Getty Images/Ingram Publishing

Ingram Publishing / Getty Images/Ingram Publishing

ELIZABETH A. NATALE

Data is no way to measure students' skills, motivation and potential

There is a calamity underway in Connecticut: the standardized evaluation of students in Grade 3 through high school using the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests. Onerous in so many ways, these tests are generating questionable data that will be used to pass judgment on students and teachers alike.

As a middle school English teacher, I am not alone in my disdain for these tests. Ask any teachers or students, and they are likely to have similar criticisms. In my school, for instance, the tests and their related "classroom activities" were allotted more than 10 hours, precious time that could have been used for teaching and learning. Because the tests must be taken on a computer, teachers and students were not allowed to use computer labs, school laptops and school Chromebooks for classroom activities on test days. In fact, the entire school schedule had to be rearranged during testing to accommodate the assessment sessions.

Why is this testing necessary? Data.

Data, Smarter Balanced claims, will prove whether students have made educational progress. Data, the state of Connecticut says, will prove whether teachers are effective in their classrooms. I believe, however, that in this case data means next to nothing.

Take, for example, a student in my school who clicked through the first Smarter Balanced mathematics test in the time it took a proctor to circle the room once. When asked why he spent so little time on the test, the student noted that he is enrolled in a remedial math class designed to help students bring their math skills up to speed. This test, he said, was far too difficult for someone like him. His conclusion: Why bother trying? His Smarter Balanced data is meaningless.

Take, as another example, my colleague who left a more lucrative — and, I dare say, less stressful — career as an attorney to become an educator. For 19 years, often seven days a week, he has poured heart and soul into helping students become better students and responsible citizens. At a recent meeting about the role of student data in the teacher evaluation process, he confided that he does not expect to receive a rating of "exemplary" but, at best, "effective." Being labeled as such will not cost him his job, but after all those years of above-and-beyond service, I believe he deserves to be "exemplary," in spite of what any data says.

My point is that data is often more discouraging than encouraging. Easily manipulated to prove a point, it also is an extremely slippery commodity. According to a recent article in U.S. News & World Report, Conard High School, which most of my students eventually will attend, ranks fourth among Connecticut high schools. Hall, the other West Hartford high school, ranks 12th. The high school in Glastonbury, where I live, is 27th. Does that mean that Conard is a better school than Hall? Is Glastonbury inferior to the other two? Of course not. Choose different data to rank them, and the results are likely to be completely different.

Please don't misunderstand. I teach at an outstanding school in a wonderful town. But the state's attempt to paint a picture of a child with data is tantamount to using a roller instead of a brush. Never will data adequately depict the nuances of any human being, let alone a third-grader pecking away at a computer keyboard.

We need to recognize that each child is an individual, none of whom is well served by the data schools are being forced to collect. Data would never have captured the essence of three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Albee, who attended Trinity College until he was expelled for failing to attend classes. College lore is that student Albee was once told by a professor that he would never amount to anything, an assessment of his potential that was seriously off target. I am confident that Smarter Balanced data, too, would have shown Albee to be a failure, blind to the exceptional talent of the boy in front of the computer screen.

We teachers and school administrators are frequently instructed to ask ourselves, "Is what I'm doing good for kids?" I believe teaching in a school community that values all aspects of a child — social, emotional, academic, athletic, creative — and works to give every student a chance to succeed is good for kids. Can the people with the power to put the Smarter Balanced test to rest honestly say the same?

Elizabeth A. Natale of Glastonbury teaches English and language arts at Sedgwick Middle School in West Hartford.